


Stubborn Souls

by Glinda



Category: EOS 10 (Podcast)
Genre: Addiction, Families of Choice, Friendship, Gen, Hero Worship, Mentor/Protégé, Reluctant Friendship, space is strange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 23:31:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9520904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glinda/pseuds/Glinda
Summary: They say you should never meet your heroes. Ryan deals with his being simultaneously both an utter let down and probably one of his favourite people. It's complicated.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: _No way to save your stubborn soul_ which is from Satisfied by Skunk Anansie
> 
> And how could I resist writing that prompt for my two favourite addicts/doctors?

They’re nothing alike. 

They’re far too alike.

Both of those statements are true and that is only the start of Ryan’s problems. He wonders sometimes if its worse to meet your hero – the person you spent so long wanting to be like – and have them be utterly unlikeable or so different from you that you would never get along. Or to meet your hero and to not get on because you’re far too alike, to see the things you hate about yourself writ large on someone else. 

Ryan wonders sometimes at the stories his father told him growing up, of this larger than life, brave and heroic character that he’d idolised. His father never mentioned that they’d not spoken in years until Ryan was in his late teens and right up until his death had refused to discuss why they didn’t talk. (Other than implying that it was a stupid reason.) After his death, Ryan has a great deal of regrets around his relationship with his dad, but despite everything he learns at the funeral he still wishes he’d pushed harder to get them to talk again. 

There’s a tiny little part of Ryan, the part of him that still idolises Urvidian despite the very real flaws on the man himself, that wonders what his life would have been like if they made up when he was kid. (If one or other of them had reached out after Ryan’s parents had got divorced.) If instead of a distant, idolised hero, Urvidian had been a disreputable, foul-mouthed favourite uncle. For all that they clash and fight, Ryan is well aware that the underlying and much denied affection between them is entirely real. Especially since the Admiral’s death, Urvidian seems to have settled into the role of surrogate uncle and Ryan is reluctantly coming to appreciate that more than he suspects he’ll ever admit. 

(The way they never mention that Urvidian has quietly added Ryan as his next of kin. The way Nurse Johns finagles the paperwork to make sure no one else ever notices the conflict of interest. As she says, they’re all utterly compromised in about six different ways without counting that, welcome to living in deep space.) 

It only gives strength to the wistful little thought that lingers. Could they have pulled each other back from the precipice of their respective addictions? Or would they just have dragged each other down, covering for and enabling each other in the worst ways. 

In the end, there’s little point in wondering about what might have been. Perhaps, what matters more, is not even if they can save each other now, but that they are here for each other, to pull each other up when they fall down. And the odd little family they’ve built, on the edge of deep space, somehow what they both need, here and now.


End file.
